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RawTherapee 3.0 Alpha 1 released under GPL license

RawTherapee author Gábor Horváth has announced the availability of the first alpha for version 3.0 of his free RAW converter and digital photo processing software. In addition to a number of major changes, the latest release now uses version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Previously RawTherapee was released only as freeware and was not open source.

Horváth says that the change in license does not mean that he will stop developing the application, but rather that he is not "keen on GUI development." He says he would rather "play with new algorithms" and he hopes that new designers will aid in creating a more usable interface. The second reason for the change is that the software is very stable on Horváth's PC and he can not always reproduce reported bugs. Switching to an open source model should help in finding and fixing the bugs, while also allowing him more time with his family.

According to Horváth, major graphical user interface (GUI) and algorithm changes are planned for the 3.0 release. The most significant GUI changes in the first alpha include a new multi-tab interface and a completely re-written editor. So far, the only change in the algorithm is in the behaviour of the exposure controls. Horváth notes that the alpha release is not a feature complete version.

RawTherapee Alpha 1 is available to download from the project's site. RawTherapee requires a at least 512 MB of RAM and supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista (32-bit) and Linux. The latest stable release is RawTherapee 2.4.1 from early September of 2009. RawTherapee source code is hosted on Google Code.